Be Water My Friend
Red Book Unit 2
Be Water
agua.jpg

“Be like water making its way through cracks.
Do not be assertive, but adjust to the object,

and you shall find a way around or through it.

If nothing within you stays rigid,


Empty your mind, be formless.
Shapeless, like water.
If you put water into a cup, it becomes the cup.

You put water into a bottle and it becomes the bottle.

Now, water can flow or it can crash. Be water, my friend.”
-Bruce Lee








The water looks _ for swimming.




The waves are _ when there is wind.




The water probably feels _ and _ .

What do you think it means to "be water"?

What does it mean that the water becomes the cup?


Bruce Lee is explaining an important concept of Taoism: if you resist life, it will crash you. Life is bigger than you, but if you flow with life you will find a way through it. You will go over the obstacles, like a river flows through hills and mountains.




VOCABULARY
Be - tells people how to act
My Friend - shows he cares about the people who read this
Be Water, My Friend - he explains the wisdom he learned from watching water



EMPTY YOUR MIND= Stop thinking.

The suffix –LESS means “without” and is used to make adjectives:
noun + -less = adjective.
-FORMLESS= Without form (shape)
-heartless= without a heart (feelings)
-hopeless= without hope (desperate)
-lifeless= without life (like dead)
-SHAPELESS= Without shape (form)


FLOW= Move like a river, smoothly going round obstacles instead of crashing into them.

CRASH= Collide, bump. To break violently or noisily; smash.